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Visualising the Akvopedia

A few weeks ago Mark Westra (above) and I began talking about how we develop the sense of the Akvopedia being an object which people can explore and interact with, rather than “just a wiki”.

Akvopedia works like Wikipedia and is filled with information on smart and affordable drinking water and sanitation technology in rural or urban settings. Last week we launched the new Akvopedia sanitation portal, after extensive work to restructure it and populate it with new content.

Within days of our conversation Mark TW had developed a cube-style visual identity that features the wonderful open source icons that Linda Parker developed last year for us, as well as images from projects by Akvo partners. The aim was to make Akvopedia feel more like an object than a wiki – and to drive the connection between appropriate technologies and real projects.

Last night Thomas and Anke surprised us all here in Istanbul by showing us some real physical cubes they’d created for us to use here at World Water Forum when talking to visitors. They all feature icons of appropriate technologies and images from many of the projects our partners are leading around the world. There’s a short video of us checking them out here.

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A little more about Akvo.org

Akvo creates and runs open source internet and mobile services that make it easy to bring international development work online. We focus on project and programme dashboards, reporting, monitoring, evaluation and making data easier to share. Headquartered in Amsterdam, Akvo is a non-profit foundation that works with more than a thousand organisations around the world.